Viewing Adobe Presentations

Introduction

Adobe Presentations are PowerPoint presentations with audio narrations and, potentially, built-in quizzes and multimedia/video. Presentations can be viewed over the web by anyone with a web browser and the Flash Player (which is installed on more than 950% of computers worldwide). At UNC, Connect is used by a partnership of schools and is supported by those schools (not by main campus ITS). If you have problems using Connect, contact the Connect administrator for the school with which you are associated. A list of UNC administrators can be found here.

The Connect Presentation interface

Connect Presentations are delivered via a 'player' with a variety of navigation and functional options. For example, the screen captures shown below are respresentative of a typical presentation, but the color schemes and available tabs may be configured differently. Some of these settings are controlled by the author of the presentation, for example, the Thumb tab may have been removed. Other settings can be changed by the user. For example, this is a presentation with no outline pane:

By clicking on the Show/hide outline pane button, the user can view the outline pane. Below is the same presentation with the outline pane visible:

Using the navigation controls

• Start/pause. Allows you to start and stop the presentation. Note: some presentations may contain slides that require the user to advance the presentation manually.
• First/last slide. Allows you to restart the presentation.
• Progress bar. Shows where you are in the presentation. You can use the arrow indicator to 'scrub' the playhead back and forth within a slide.
• Audio volume. Adjusts volume. Note: The Connect volume control can only turn the volume up to the maximum level set by your computer's operating system. If you have set the system to mute audio, the Connect volume control will have no effect.
• Show/hide attachments. Displays a popup window linking any file attachments that have been included with the presentation.
• Show/hide outline pane. Toggles the outline pane, which is typically on the right-hand side of the interface (although it can be located elsewhere).

Using the outline pane

The outline pane normally contains four tabbed sections, although the creator of the presentation determines which ones are available.

• Outline Lists the slides for the show. You can click on a specific slide listing to jump directly to it.
• Thumb. Provides a thumbnail view of the slides and functions like the outline tab.
• Notes. Contains any text notes that were included in the original PowerPoint presentation.
• Search. Text search for the presentation. Includes slide text and notes.

System requirements

Browser. Adobe Presentations can be viewed using most web browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Netscape 7, Firefox 2 and 3 and Safari 3.

Flash player. Adobe Presentations use Flash technology, and your web browser must have a recent version of the Flash Player installed —at least version 8. If you don't have Flash download a free copy of the Flash player.